


The Murray Chronicles

by Barb G (troutkitty)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Humor, M/M, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-15
Updated: 2005-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:58:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutkitty/pseuds/Barb%20G
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney brings something home--melodrama ensues.  Two short, somewhat connected challenge fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Plus One

The plan itself was not foolproof, but foolproof enough for mere mortals. Zelenka had caught him working on the fully functional prototype stasis jar earlier in the year. Rodney had found it--okay, went actively looking for it--in one of the storage rooms of the city. Zelenka probably wanted to ask questions, but Rodney gave a patented glare, and Zelenka threw up his hands, obviously unwilling to fight this time. They'd been between crises that particular moment, and nothing became of it.

The proto-type did work, but still needed a self-contained energy source that would last at least a month. It took him a while to figure that one out. But, when all was said and done, it did pay to be a genius.

The size, of course, was another concern. It had to be large enough for the cargo, but small enough to fit in a cube the size of a milk-crate they gave everyone for their personal belongings. He supposed that was a blessing as well. The last time it had been a shoe-box. Siberia, it had been what ever he could fit in his... he didn't want to dwell on Siberia.

Of course, when the siege began, the project had to wait. When it was time to go back to Earth, he could only take his best attempt and go.

The debriefing had a debriefing, and Elizabeth kept them busy with all her meetings. He gave her 98% of his attention span, far more than he usually gave her with the Major in the room, and eventually, they were given the weekend for shore leave.

No plan was entirely without flaw, and he certainly didn't intend to spend most of his Sunday night on his last day on Earth up a tree, but treed he certainly spent it, hanging on a branch and using his most logical arguments in vain. He supposed that's why he had wanted Murray in his life; the cat was the one creature on Earth who simply refused to be bludgeoned by his sheer will. It had been refreshing until John managed it, off Earth, on a daily basis. Rodney found himself wondering how Murray and the Major would get along with each other.

Finally, at dawn, Murray ambled back down from the upper branches into Rodney's arms as though that had been his cunning plan the whole while, and together they dropped back down to the soft ground. Murray, his objections to the plan well and truly noted from his position and arguments in the tree, didn't fight the jar. Screwing on the lid was harder than Rodney thought possible, but Murray remained unconcerned, even as the fine white mist settled down over him. Rodney held him until Murray entered the state of stasis, and then gently lowered the whole thing into the cooler he picked out. It was labeled with a sign identifying the contents as his and threatening slow, lingering death to anyone who would dare think of stealing his food. Sometimes having a reputation was worth it.

On the way back to Cheyenne Mountain, he scanned the cooler for life-signs, but it gave off nothing that the chicken potpies it was labeled as wouldn't. The chamber, filled with the white smoke, would not be breeched until they arrived back home.

His home. The Major. The not yet being sucked into his own mortality, and his cat. It was going to be a very good year.


	2. Plus One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney brings something home--melodrama ensues. Two short, somewhat connected challenge fics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was mostly constructed via dictation on a 14-hour drive to Seattle, wherein I was in the sun for a vast majority of it.

Rodney knew something was wrong when he got to the mess hall that morning and discovered Kavanagh had grown a moustache. "All the better to twirl with, my dear," he'd say to anyone who would listen, and many of those who wouldn't.

"John's honour's in trouble again," Rodney said to himself. "But first, I need breakfast." Breakfast turned to secondses, midmorning tea and then an early lunch, but then he went straight to John's aid.

Where Kavanagh found a railway track, Rodney would never know, but he filed it under _Plot, American television's pathetic attempts at._ And there was John, trussed up like the filling of his favourite sandwich, right down to the little chef's caps on his hands.

"Do we even have those on our manifest?" Rodney demanded.

"What do you care?" Kavanagh said as he appeared with a puff of smoke, and by "appeared", Rodney meant the Transporter arrived, and by "puff of smoke", he meant the wisps of fog the dry ice that Kavanagh threw out in front of him as he leapt (and consequently almost slipped on) produced. The results, even being generous, was a poor substitute for real melodrama. "I found a freaking railroad track!"

Rodney ignored the out of character speech patterns; there were much bigger things at stake. Namely, he now seemed to be dressed in a shoot-me-now red serge.

"Hey! Don't let the flag patch fool you. I didn't even like due South." He didn't. All that niceness made him break out in hives.

John's gag, a delicate thing of lace and such, mysteriously slipped from his mouth. "Well, you know what they say about Mounties," John drawled.

"What, 'maintain the right?'" Rodney could say it in both official languages, but that wasn't the point.

"No. They always get their man."

Rodney considered himself a strong man, despite the fact he never could resist John's plaintive, elongated vowels. But on this, he remained adamant. "I'm only indulgent to a point," he said, threateningly.

His serge was now his tight blue T-shirt. Much tighter than he remembered it, and suddenly dripping wet. "Oh, ha-ha."

The puff of air that dried him tried to ruffle his hair and it almost succeeded.

His nipples began to chafe the next heartbeat.

Kavanagh, as all good villains who understood their roles, had been lurking off in the distance to allow them their little tete-a-tete, but now that the attention returned to him, he leapt back into the lime light, for what it was. "I challenge you to a duel," he snapped, affecting a ridiculous accent.

"A dual what?" Rodney asked. He had in his pocket an ancient artefact they had found last week that temporarily stunned all scientists with long hair pulled back into a pony-tail, wore glasses and could grow moustaches at the drop of a kink, but it had already been filed under _Plot, Lazy fanfic authors substitution for, (condition unused),_ and after all that work clarifying its status, he didn't want to have to recatalogue it.

"A duel. A duel of--" Kavanagh paused dramatically despite the complete lack of drama in this entire story line. "--Wits."

"Wits," Rodney repeated.

"Yes, wits. The winner retakes Major Sheppard's honor _(sic)_."

Rodney added the editorial mark to Kavanagh's last sentence before continuing. "You want to have a battle of wits. With me," he asked, just to be sure that he understood the situation.

Kavanagh nodded.

"Done," Rodney said, and flicked his finger with his thumb. The sheer amount of snark in the loosened epidermals that floated across the space between him and Kavanagh knocked the man across the room and into a pile of boxes that probably spared the stunt double some nasty bruises. "Can we go?" he asked, and then turned to help his...Rodney shuddered...man.

What he didn't realize, and which turned out to be his downfall, was that this had been his fantasy too, apparently. Kavanagh threw Rodney's Nobel Peace Prize aside to grab on to the Stanley Cup (with the Calgary Flames taking it in 2004 rather than the travesty that had actually happened) and bashed Rodney over the head with it.

When Rodney woke up again, he, too, was wearing the little white booties over his hands, and Kavanagh stood over both of them. "I've got you now, my pretty," he said, eyes shining beneath his glasses. "And, er, your little dog, too."

Rodney didn't know who should have been the most insulted. "Don't think you've won," he snapped.

"I do. I do think I've won. What could possibly stop me now?" Kavanagh demanded.

Rodney began making kissing noises.

"What the--" both Kavanagh and John said at the same time. Rodney kept calling, and, when Murray damn well felt like it, he stuck his orange tabby head out of one of the boxes the stunt man had crushed.

"Prr-worl?" Murray asked.

"It can't be!" Kavanagh cried, "How did you know my one weak--" he began, but then his throat closed up in a horrible anaphylactic shock. He keeled over and died.

"Is he going to be all right?" John asked, concerned.

"Oh, most definitely," Rodney assured him. "It's one of those 24-hour deaths. He'll wake up with a bad headache and a hairball or two. Now, all we need is Murray to come here and untie us both. Murray, quickly, the way I taught you."

Murray sat down and began licking his shoulder.

Meanwhile, the room began to shake as the train's whistle echoed.

  



End file.
